Roger Herman

Roger Herman is a German artist born in 1947. He work intuitively with clay, but generally starts with wheel thrown forms that are stacked, cut, altered, and decorated. Often featuring bright underglaze colors contrasting with dark, glossy glazes, the pots range from small, handheld cup- or bowl-like pieces to massive vases, urn-like pots, and large platters. Herman also employs many drawing and painting techniques, including inlay, scraffito, wax resist, oxide wash, and combinations of underglaze and glaze. Not bound by one style, some pots are abstract color fields while others are completely covered in figurative drawing. Often fired and refired, the pots exude a considered casualness that is also open, honest, and exuberant.

Raw energy and an instinctual sensory relationship to colour and textures is immediately apparent through the bulk of his work, which spans from drawings to paintings, books to ceramics, t-shirts and woodcut prints. His wild blends of ad-hoc and quickly-dashed lines, shapes, opacities, smears layer together in awkward but satisfying compositions. Gestures are as boldly applied as covered up, allowing shapes to recede and reveal themselves simultaneously, in a true polyphony of style.